When will Mac game work under Lion?

[Collingwood]

drbassie a colleague of mine supports hundreds of macs here and says the changes in Lion are pretty extensive. Happily work doesn't require me to update (yet). Good luck

YankeeDog oh yes, it's not just Apple updates that cause heartache. I support UNIX enterprise stuff as well as OSX, but the real world requires a lot of my work happens on Windows too. As a developer in the past on both Win and Mac I understand, even empathise with both.

Bottom line for me is that I am ecstatic that BF released CMBN for OSX. Not many other wargame companies out there that care about us.

[xian]

Bottom line for me is that I am ecstatic that BF released CMBN for OSX. Not many other wargame companies out there that care about us.

Yup - over the moon with CM back on Mac. I upgraded to a new (secondhand) iMac just to be able to play CMBN. Sadly, I still cannot bring myself to buy a PC. I really tried to buy one this time round but pulled out last minute. I know they are fantastic and faster and cheaper than Macs, but there is just something fundamentally depressing about them.

[Michael Emrys]

...unless I can't live without the features of the next OS (e.g. Lion) or software I desperately need won't run on anything other than the new OS I won't upgrade.

Live and learn - I will not upgrade to Lion until at least 10.7.3 or 10.7.4 is released and I know the apps I depend on are fine on it. 10.6.8 works perfectly OK for me.

Very prudent. That is precisely the same course that I am taking. I don't know what new features Lion has, but I doubt that there are any I can't live without for the moment. I don't need or use half the features in Snow Leopard and that has pretty much been the story with all of Apple's upgrades all along. Some are cool and useful, others...meh.

Michael

[drbassie]

I don't know what new features Lion has, but I doubt that there are any I can't live without for the moment. I don't need or use half the features in Snow Leopard and that has pretty much been the story with all of Apple's upgrades all along. Some are cool and useful, others...meh.

Michael

From a business side, they redid their Windows sharing protocol. We were having some issues with that at the office and were anticipating coming out of the dark ages of NT-era mac/windows compatibility.

[Guest]

Hey guys - thought I'd pass along an update on the patch. It's been another long weekend (is it really Tuesday? I'm shocked) but things are finally coming together. As I've mentioned before we've been working on installer and game fixes, and our DRM company has been working on their own fixes, and we've been testing all of these as well, so it's been... a complex process.

We're still testing, and we've got one more small patch coming from the DRM company, but the DRM, installer, and game are otherwise "done" - unless some new problems come up we're good to go. The patch includes installer and DRM changes and some game fixes as well. It should fix the Lion problems and improve the CM on Mac experience for both 10.6 and 10.7 users.

The timeline on when we'll get it out is still fairly loose - as mentioned we're still testing, and once we get the DRM patch we'll need to do one more quick round of testing, and we'll release it then if nothing breaks. I'm hoping sometime in the next few days. If anything major comes up I'll pop back in and let you know.

[Chek]

Sadly, I still cannot bring myself to buy a PC. I really tried to buy one this time round but pulled out last minute. I know they are fantastic and faster and cheaper than Macs, but there is just something fundamentally depressing about them.

I did just that.Played the demo on boot camp and snow leopard and was intending to buy the windows version as it seemed to run better.Then the iMacs hard drive died and had been thinking of a replacement so I took the plunge and went the OTHER way.Fitted a firewire card and up/crossgraded my audio software.Was very suprised to find how easy it was.Did take a bit of getting used to doing things a little differently though.

My son has the iMac now and is booting from an external drive(can't do that on windows),it is nice to sit down in front of the mac now again though.

[Guest]

Ahh, Chek and I posted about a minute apart. I updated on the patch progress just above, so no one misses it.

I love Macs. I just wish they weren't so expensive. I've been looking for something more portable than my 15" MBP, and the Lenovo X220 (I have several Lenovos and Macs as work laptops, and really enjoy both brands) looks like a heck of a lot more bang for the buck than the Macbook Air.

[ClarkWGriswold]

They're more expensive, yes, but you certainly get what you pay for. Comparing a Lenovo to a MacBook Air is like comparing a Hyundai to a Mercedes. Both of them will get you from Point A to Point B, but one of them does it with luxury, style, and unparalleled quality.

What other company would make a notebook out of a solid chunk of milled aluminum?

[STORMCROW-UK]

Good news on the patch progress. After fixing the DRM licensing issue (no comment) I can get the game started but it's really unstable. Two quick questions:-

1) Would a clean install of CM:BN correct the issue?

2) And I'm assuming the patch will fix the issues. Currently the crash reports go to apple as per the standard OS process. Do you get these or should we be collected/submitting via another mechanism?

And a word of support, whilst I do bootcamp it's a hassle and it's a huge attraction to have the game native.

[Guest]

Stormcrow - please send the crash reports to me! File a ticket with help desk, send me a PM or email, post them on the forums, whatever you have to do. Apple doesn't send them to me, so users should copy and paste them and send them along so I can take a look at them. I very much appreciate it.

A clean install is unlikely to fix crashing. What version of CM are you running? The 1.01 patch does fix a number of crash issues if you haven't applied it. The updated patch which we'll be releasing soon only explicitly fixes one. If you're having crash bugs, and you're running the latest 1.01 patch, *please* send the reports.

[Guest]

They're more expensive, yes, but you certainly get what you pay for. Comparing a Lenovo to a MacBook Air is like comparing a Hyundai to a Mercedes. Both of them will get you from Point A to Point B, but one of them does it with luxury, style, and unparalleled quality.

What other company would make a notebook out of a solid chunk of milled aluminum?

None at all!

I dunno - a Lenovo has the edge in pretty much everything but attractiveness and OSX in my opinion. The X220's specs beat the new 13" MBA by a long shot, even when you price the MBA at $1000 over the Lenovo's current sale price.

To top it off the Lenovos are *sturdy*. My X200 is built like a tank; I've dropped it, spilled soda on it, had my three-year-old stand on it, and the worst that's happened is I've had to replace a couple of keys that popped out. My X31 was run over and while the case cracked the roll cage held and it runs like a champ.

I'm pretty sure if any of that happened to my Mac it'd spend a week or two in the shop, if I got lucky and AppleCare covered the damage.

All said, I do love my Macs, and if you want to be an Apple developer you've gotta buy Apple... I just wish they were cheaper or the specs were better. (Also, my own personal jury is still out on the HD 3000 replacing the 320M.)

[xian]

Good news on the patch progress. After fixing the DRM licensing issue (no comment) I can get the game started but it's really unstable. Two quick questions:-

1) Would a clean install of CM:BN correct the issue?

2) And I'm assuming the patch will fix the issues. Currently the crash reports go to apple as per the standard OS process. Do you get these or should we be collected/submitting via another mechanism?

And a word of support, whilst I do bootcamp it's a hassle and it's a huge attraction to have the game native.

Yes - you can find recent crash reports in:

[username] - Library - Logs - DiagnosticReports

[zoltangrose]

None at all!

I dunno - a Lenovo has the edge in pretty much everything but attractiveness and OSX in my opinion. The X220's specs beat the new 13" MBA by a long shot, even when you price the MBA at $1000 over the Lenovo's current sale price.

Don't forget to set the harddisk to 128 GB Solid State (+$280), add the camera (+$30), add Bluetooth (+$20) and you get a little less screen. I'd be willing to go with "edges out" but "long shot" seems a stretch.

[Guest]

Yep. With my current discounts (I get some club discounts + the current back to school special) I get the build I want at sub-$1000. Of course with the Lenovo I can always add an SSD later, probably for much less than $280. That would drop the entry price considerably.

Speaking of "edges out", how does the 1.7 Ghz i5 measure up against the 2.5 Ghz i5-2520? With the Sandy Bridge architecture working the way it does I'd guess the 2.5 would beat the hooey out of the stock MBA 13 processor. Considering that drives the speed of both general processing and GPU, with comparable SSD and RAM speeds you're looking at the Lenovo crushing the MBA, right?

[Chek]

Have to admit the price did swing me it was about double the price for a similar Mac and the ability to swop out various components.Swopping hard drives out on an imac ain't exactly straight forward.

So far Windows 7 seems pretty good(touch wood)bit of mucking around setting it up but all quite doable.

Do kinda miss me mac though,been using them intensively since the mid 90s.

Still got an old lamp stand style iMac for playing CMx1 on.

[STORMCROW-UK]

Hi Phil

Ticket AAQ-799024 includes the crashlogs.

[Guest]

Thanks Stormcrow.

[Guest]

Stormcrow - as far as I can see all of the crashes you've reported should be fixed in 1.01. The latest 1.01 patch (or the updated one, coming soon) should do the trick.

[STORMCROW-UK]

Thanks Phil, these crashes are occurring in the current 1.01 version. I'm relieved that the new version corrects this issue as it occurs every time. Call me old fashioned but can I suggest every time you issue a new patch you give it a different version number? It just makes it a lot easier to track :-)

[STORMCROW-UK]

Wait, I just re-read what you said, are you saying these should already be fixed? Because they're not and I'm wondering if it was because I patched from 1.00 to 1.01 and then to the revised 1.01 patch?

[Michael Emrys]

Wait, I just re-read what you said, are you saying these should already be fixed? Because they're not and I'm wondering if it was because I patched from 1.00 to 1.01 and then to the revised 1.01 patch?

That possibility has been raised before, but with no clear-cut definitive answer AFAIK.

Michael

[Guest]

Wait, I just re-read what you said, are you saying these should already be fixed? Because they're not and I'm wondering if it was because I patched from 1.00 to 1.01 and then to the revised 1.01 patch?

Yep, crashes like the ones you reported should be fixed. If they're not we'll have to deal with them.

Do you see FPS numbers in the lower-right hand corner of the screen when playing scenarios? That'll tell you if you're using the latest version of the patch. Yes, we normally would increase the version numbers, but our system was set up to have the Windows patch mirror the Mac... which means we couldn't change the version numbers on the hotfixes.

[Guest]

That possibility has been raised before, but with no clear-cut definitive answer AFAIK.

What are we looking for a clear-cut answer to? If it's whether or not installing multiple patches could cause problems (especially when the initial patch might have had permissions issues due to the OS) then the answer would be "yes".

[ClarkWGriswold]

Yes, we normally would increase the version numbers, but our system was set up to have the Windows patch mirror the Mac... which means we couldn't change the version numbers on the hotfixes.

I'm sure this is easier said than done, but it would be nice if you could have the first two significant digits work, with hotfixes and such incrementing a third digit. ie:

1.1 Windows works with 1.1.1 Mac

1.1.3 Windows works with 1.1.6 Mac

1.2.X Windows works with 1.2.X Mac (but not necessarily with 1.1.X)

etc.

Having three (or more) versions of "v1.1" for the Mac is going to get confusing in a hurry, if it's not already.

In any case, glad to hear that the next patch is coming. Any chance you're going to fix the (admittedly very minor) issue with "ALT-TAB switch to desktop" so that it correctly reads "CMD+TAB switch to desktop"? </threadjack>

[Guest]

I'm sure this is easier said than done, but it would be nice if you could have the first two significant digits work, with hotfixes and such incrementing a third digit. ie:

1.1 Windows works with 1.1.1 Mac

1.1.3 Windows works with 1.1.6 Mac

1.2.X Windows works with 1.2.X Mac (but not necessarily with 1.1.X)

etc.

Having three (or more) versions of "v1.1" for the Mac is going to get confusing in a hurry, if it's not already.

Yeah, we can do that in some places, but not in others. So we can change the binary version, but the patcher version and the package version need to stay constant so OSX can find them properly, and the version up on the download service can't change... next time around we're just going to set it up so that we can make hotfixes if necessary with different versions.

In any case, glad to hear that the next patch is coming. Any chance you're going to fix the (admittedly very minor) issue with "ALT-TAB switch to desktop" so that it correctly reads "CMD+TAB switch to desktop"? </threadjack>

Nope, none at all. We've got keypress fixes, permissions fixes, Lion fixes, a fix for working with case-sensitive OSX partitions, and a crash fix - basically small stuff and immediately critical stuff.

The thing with the "switch to desktop" text is actually a reasonably big deal, as it's one of the internationalized pieces of text in the game and a) changing it on the fly isn't easy and setting up an alternate set of text only for one OS version isn't easy either. We'd basically be completely changing a whole system for one piece of text. Not that it won't happen at some point, it's just unlikely until much bigger fish are out of the way.